How to Choose the Best Enterprise Backup Software in 2025? Best Enterprise Backup Solutions and Tools.

Introduction

Enterprise data backup is a comprehensive combination of procedures, policies, and technologies designed to preserve and protect business-critical information in large and complex organizational infrastructures. An enterprise-grade backup solution is the backup software itself, as well as network connections with high bandwidth, immutable storage of various types, internal knowledge bases, employee training programs, and extensive vendor documentation. These solutions were originally made to handle the complex requirements of companies that manage thousands of endpoints, petabytes of data, and diverse IT environments covering on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructures.

The value of a reliable backup solution for a modern business is difficult to overestimate in today’s digital landscape. Ransomware attacks already affect a large portion of businesses worldwide, with data breaches becoming more common and more complex at the same time, while regulatory compliance requirements grow more stringent in many industries. In this environment, enterprise backup software has had to evolve from a simple tool for data protection into a critical foundation for business continuity.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the essential aspects of enterprise backup software selection and implementation, offering decision-makers the knowledge they need to protect the most valuable information in their business. We’ll examine:

• The definition of enterprise backup software
• The leading backup software platforms for enterprises
• Critical backup strategies, such as the 3-2-2 rule
• Gartner’s latest evaluation of enterprise backup vendors
• Differences between on-premises and cloud deployment options
• Essential security features for protecting against modern threats

Understanding Enterprise Backup Solutions: Types, Features, and Business Impact

Enterprise backup solutions are categorized into several key areas that determine their effectiveness in large-scale businesses. To make informed decisions about backup software, it is essential to understand the different types of backup software, their features, and the advantages each provides to enterprise environments.

What Makes Enterprise Backups Different from Standard Methods and Approaches?

Enterprise backup software tools are indispensable components of modern-day business operations, as more and more companies increasingly rely on their IT infrastructures. These solutions’ role in safeguarding valuable information from theft, human error, corruption and loss is irreplaceable.

The significance of enterprise data backup goes beyond basic data protection to cover such valued topics as:

1. Business Continuity Assurance. Enterprise backup solutions ensure organizations will be able to maintain operations during and after disruptive events, minimizing both revenue loss and downtime.
2. Regulatory Compliance. Backup systems must always be adjusted to follow the organization’s regulatory mandates. Depending on the nature of the enterprise, compliance regulations encompass a variety of frameworks, from generic and all-encompassing (GDPR) to industry-specific (HIPAA, CMMC 2.0, ITAR, DORA).
3. Cyber Resilience. Enterprise-grade data protection is often the last line of defense against ransomware attacks, especially in the modern landscape of digital threats. Secure backup files offer clean data copies for recovery when primary systems are somehow compromised.
4. Scalability Requirements. Backup environments at enterprise scale are comprehensive systems designed to protect, manage, and recover the extremely large volumes of data that businesses generate. These solutions must go far beyond the capabilities of traditional backup methods, providing a variety of scalability and reliability options, along with a range of advanced features to meet the specific needs of large-scale business operations.

What are the Different Types of Enterprise Backup Solutions?

Enterprise backup solutions are categorized into several groups using their deployment architecture and delivery model, with each group addressing specific organizational needs and infrastructure demands. In the following sections we cover the following:

• Software-only solutions
• Integrated backup appliances
• Backup-as-a-Service options
• Hybrid backup software
• Cloud-native backup solutions
• Multi-cloud backup platforms

Software-Only Backup Solutions

Software-only backup solutions offer organizations backup software that is deployed on the existing hardware architecture, providing extensive flexibility and a wide range of customization opportunities. Notable examples of such software-only backup solutions include Bacula Enterprise, Commvault’s software licenses, and IBM Spectrum Protect.

The primary advantages of software-only backup solutions are:

• Deployment capabilities onto existing hardware infrastructure without additional appliance cost
• A high degree of customization and configuration to meet the organization’s specific needs
• Extensive flexibility in scaling decisions and hardware selection

Integrated Backup Appliances

Integrated backup appliances are turnkey solutions – backup software and optimized hardware combined in the same pre-configured system designed with the primary goal of simple deployment and management . Rubrik, Cohesity, and Dell Data Protection are all great examples of backup companies offering hardware backup appliances.

Integrated backup options are best known for:

• Pre-configured hardware and software integration for immediate deployment
• Vendor support for both hardware and software components
• Simplified deployment and management processes that emphasizes vendor optimization

Backup-as-a-Service Options

Backup-as-a-Service options are fully managed backup services delivered from the cloud, eliminating the need for any on-premises infrastructure management or maintenance. Most noteworthy examples of such platforms are HYCU and Druva, among others.

Key benefits of such environments include:

• Backup environments fully managed by a service provider with minimal requirements for consumption of internal resources
• No on-premises infrastructure requirements or maintenance responsibilities whatsoever
• Subscription-based pricing models with highly predictable operational expenses

Hybrid Backup Software

Hybrid backup solutions are a combination of on-premises and cloud components for comprehensive data protection that balances performance, cost, and security requirements. Popular examples of such solutions include Commvault, Bacula Enterprise, Barracuda Backup, and Veeam.

The biggest advantages of hybrid backup solutions are:

• Local backup enables rapid data recovery of the most frequently accessed information
• Cloud replication measures for disaster recovery and long-term data retention
• Flexible deployment options capable of adapting to changing business environments

Cloud-Native Backup Solutions

Cloud-native backup solutions are created specifically for cloud-native applications and cloud environments – offering deep integration with the infrastructure and APIs (Application Programming Interface) of their cloud service providers. Azure Backup, AWS Backup, and N2WS are just a few examples of such options.

These solutions offer the following benefits to their users:

• API-driven automation and extensive integration with cloud management tools
• An environment created specifically for cloud infrastructure, whether Google Cloud Platform, Azure, AWS, or other
• Regular use of pay-as-you-use pricing models that align well with cloud economics and result in substantial savings for certain businesses

Multi-Cloud Backup Platforms

Multi-cloud backup platforms provide unified backup management across several different cloud environments and providers, helping companies avoid vendor lock-in while retaining centralized control. Notable examples of such environments include Rubrik, Cohesity, Bacula Enterprise, and Commvault.

Most noteworthy capabilities of such environments are:

• Vendor-agnostic cloud support across a range of providers
• Centralized management and monitoring for diverse cloud environments
• Data portability between providers, avoiding the disastrous consequences of vendor lock-in

Benefits of Using Enterprise Backup Software for Data Protection

Now that we have covered the different options on the backup software market, it is time to cover the most valuable advantages of an enterprise backup solution. The six main advantages are covered below:

• Cost reduction
• Administration simplification
• Training and support minimization
• Regulatory compliance
• Security and ransomware protection
• Disaster recovery and business continuity

Reduction of Backup and Recovery Costs 

When data is stored in the cloud, recovery costs will  always be substantial. Cloud storage providers tend to charge less for uploading data, but much more when data is downloaded for recovery reasons. Good backup software minimizes both download volume and storage costs for both disk and tape storage types.

Backup Administration Simplification

The management of enterprise IT infrastructures with tens of thousands of endpoints (computers, servers, Virtual Machines and others) is inherently very complex.  Backup processes will be difficult for an administrator who must think about where to backup the specific endpoint, whether there is enough storage or network bandwidth available, what are the retention policies for this data and whether the older copies must be migrated to free up space. Dedicated efficiency tools, like automated copy or migration of backed up data, automated restart of backup jobs after cancellation, job scheduling and sequencing with priorities, reduce the complexity of this process to a certain degree.

Staff Training and Ongoing Support Minimization

Enterprise companies typically have a large IT staff. Teaching new employees how to use the backup system is difficult and time-consuming when done manually by existing professionals. Leveraging intuitive UI and automation features significantly reduces the need for extensive staff training and ongoing support, making enterprise backup management somewhat more efficient and cost-effective.

Regulatory Compliance Improvement

Backup systems must always adjust to the organization’s regulatory mandate. Depending on the nature of the enterprise, compliance regulations are either generic like GDPR, NIST, FIPS, or industry-specific – like HIPAA, DORA,  ITAR or CMMC 2.0. Local regulations apply here as well, such as Australia’s Essential Eight, UK’s Government Security Classifications, and more. Enterprise companies have no choice but to carefully navigate and engage with the complex landscape of compliance regulations all over the world.

Security and Ransomware Protection

Enterprise backup solutions offer critical protection against ransomware attacks and cyber threats, using features like air-gapped storage, backup immutability, and comprehensive encryption algorithms. Creating write-once-read-many (WORM) storage is also an option: a storage segment that cannot be modified once written to ensure a clean recovery point, even after a successful cyberattack of sorts.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Large-scale backup environments using automated failover capabilities, bare metal recovery, and support for high availability infrastructures provide minimal downtime and business continuity. These solutions assist organizations to maintain operations during hardware failures, natural disasters, and major system outages, all while meeting the enterprise’s recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).

Open-Source vs Commercial Enterprise Backup Solutions

Overview of Open-Source vs Commercial Backup Solutions 

Open-source backup solutions offer organizations cost-effective data protection using freely available software and community-driven development; a stark contrast to commercial enterprise backup solutions that provide comprehensive feature sets, professional support, and vendor accountability via paid licensing models.

Open-source solutions may require internal IT expertise for successful implementation, as well as for customization and ongoing maintenance. This makes them much more suitable for organizations with in-house technical capabilities, but  small budgets. Commercial solutions, on the other hand, are turnkey platforms with the regular updates, vendor support, compliance certifications, and service level agreements that enterprise environments need for protection of mission-critical data.

Primary Benefits of Open-Source and Commercial Backup Software

Before committing to any option, enterprise organizations must carefully evaluate whether open-source solutions satisfy their specific requirements for scalability, security, compliance, and operational support.

Commercial backup software often provides a wide range of advanced features that may not be available or readily accessible in open-source alternatives, such as enterprise-grade encryption, automated compliance reporting, or integration with enterprise management systems. That being said, open-source backup solutions tend to provide greater flexibility in customization while avoiding vendor lock-in concerns, and are often much more cost-effective for businesses that are willing to invest in internal expertise and development resources. One additional benefit of open source-based solutions such as Bacula is that the code has been downloaded and tested by many thousands of developers worldwide. As a result, open source solutions such as this tend to have very high levels of dependability, security and stability.

Bacula Community and Bacula Enterprise

It is possible to provide examples for both of these solution-types using Bacula Systems and their software offerings.

Bacula Community is a leading open-source backup solution with extensive backup and recovery functionality that relies primarily on community support and documentation. Bacula Enterprise is built on this open-source foundation, adding commercial-grade features like professional support, advanced security, and enterprise scalability, all of which makes it suitable for even large-scale enterprise environments.

This dual approach provides the best of both worlds, and also allows organizations to evaluate the platform’s open-source capabilities using Bacula Community at no additional cost before transitioning to the commercial Bacula Enterprise solution once the organization’s enterprise requirements exceed the limitations of the open-source option.

Top Industry Leading Backup Software

The enterprise backup software market offers a wide range of solutions, each with distinct strengths and capabilities designed to meet specific organizational requirements. To assist in navigating this complex and nuanced landscape, we have comprehensively analyzed 14 of the leading backup platforms, including their features, performance, customer satisfaction, and enterprise-readiness to find the option most suitable for any business scenario.

The Review of Top 14 Enterprise Backup Solutions

Rubrik

 

Rubrik is one of the best backup and recovery vendors on the market, specializing in hybrid IT environments. Rubrik Cloud Data Management (RCDM) is their own creation, which makes data protection and cloud integration so much easier. Of course, they also have their own data management platform: Polaris. Polaris consists of Polaris GPS for policy management and reporting and Polaris Radar for ransomware detection and rehabilitation.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 74 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.8/10 stars based on 234 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 94 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Clean and organized administrative interface
• Multi-cloud and hybrid offerings and integrations with multiple cloud storage providers
• Vast automation capabilities

Shortcomings:

• Cannot backup Azure SQL directly to the cloud, requiring extra steps to do so
• First-time setup is long and difficult
• Documentation is scant; could use helpful articles and whitepapers

Pricing:

• Rubrik’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website; the only way to obtain pricing information is by contacting the company directly for a personalized demo or a guided demonstration.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Jon H. – Capterra – “Rubrik has allowed us to stop focusing on the minutiae of running a homegrown backup storage/orchestration product and focus on automation of the infrastructure/deployment instead. Rubrik has improved the performance of our backup jobs, allowing us to perform more backups with fewer resources overall Rubrik has given our clients more choice in how backups function”
• Verified Reviewer – Capterra – “It’s improved operational efficiency, as we now don’t have to spend time scheduling backups, and has created very tangible savings. In the next 5 years we expect to save over 55% switching from our legacy provider to Rubrik. It also mitigated us against any future data centre blackouts through its Azure replication capabilities – while significantly reducing our power consumption and footprint in the data centre.”

The author’s personal opinion about Rubrik:

Rubrik is a reasonably versatile enterprise backup solution that includes many features one expects from a modern backup solution of this scale. It offers extensive backup and recovery options, a versatile data management platform, a host of data protection measures for different circumstances, extensive policy-based management, and so on. Rubrik’s main specialization is in working with hybrid IT environments, but it also works with practically any company – if the customer in question is fine with the price Rubrik charges for its services.

Unitrends

When it comes to Hyper-V and VMware backup solutions, Unitrends is always an option. First, it’s free for the first 1 TB of data, and there are multiple editions (free, essentials, standard, enterprise, and enterprise plus) for customers with different data limits. Other features of Unitrends’ backup solution include instant Virtual Machine (VM) recovery, data compression capabilities, ransomware detection service, protection for virtual and physical files, and, of course, community support.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 35 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.0/10 stars based on 635 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 431 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The backup process is easy to initiate once it is set up properly
• Granular control over the entire backup process
• Convenient dashboard with centralized access to a wealth of information

Shortcomings:

• Single file recovery is not easy to initiate from the web interface
• Infrequent false alerts
• No instruction sets in the interface itself, only in web forums

Pricing:

• Unitrends’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website, meaning the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote, a free trial, or a guided demonstration.
• Unofficial information states that Unitrends has a paid version that starts at $349 USD

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Yuri M. – Capterra – “it gives us less time to restore in case of an emergency and also the learning curve is quick. The reports are also very informative so we can know exactly what is happening with the backups and make sure we can restore in case we need it.”
• Richard S. – Capterra – “Support has been really good. But they suggested and did a firmware and software upgrade. I had to remove the client from all my servers and reinstall it. Then the backups didn’t run for several days. Have to work with support to get everything working again correctly.”

The author’s personal opinion about Unitrends:

Unitrends’s marketing emphasizes “solving the issue of complex backup solutions.” The software itself is fairly competent. Unitrends’s most popular offering is a backup and recovery platform that covers virtual environments, physical storage, apps, cloud storage, and even endpoints. A centralized approach to managing a multitude of data sources at once greatly boosts the solution’s overall convenience, and most of its processes are highly customizable. It has its own issues, including a confusing pricing model and a problematic granular restoration process, but none of these issues reduce the overall effectiveness of the software as a whole.

Veeam Backup & Replication

If we’re talking about some specific virtual environments such as vSphere, then Veeam could be our first pick, with its technologies that allow flexible and fast data recovery when you need it. Veeam’s all-in-one solution is capable of protecting VMware vSphere/Hyper-V virtual environments and doing basic backup and recovery jobs, as well. The scalability of the solution is quite impressive too, as well as the number of its specific features, like deduplication, instant file-level recovery, and so on. Veeam’s distribution model is not exactly complex, either: there are several versions with different capabilities and variable pricing.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 75 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.9/10 stars based on 1,605 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 634 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Initial setup is simple and easy
• Most of Veeam’s solutions are available for free for smaller companies, with some limitations
• Good customer support

Shortcomings:

• UI could be more user-friendly
• The pricing of the solution is higher than average
• Mastering all of Veeam’s capabilities requires significant time and resources
• Security levels are questionable

Pricing:

• Veeam’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website, meaning the only way to obtain pricing information is by contacting the company directly for a quote or a free trial. What it does have is a pricing calculator page that lets users specify the number of different environments they want covered with Veeam’s solution, as well as the planned subscription period. All of that is sent to Veeam to receive a personalized quote.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Rahul J. – Capterra – “I have been using Veeam since from February 2021. It’s actually good software but faced many backup issues when Server size was more than 1TB. Otherwise restoration processes are good, Instance recovery processes are also simple and useful for migration also. It’s seriously very good software for full server type backup(Host base backup).”
• Joshua H. – Capterra – “I use this to manage backups of office-facing and production servers in a non-profit business. We have less than 10 servers to care for and the free Community Edition is perfect. I have found the features and reporting to be robust. Practicing restores is no trouble. I have never needed vendor support to operate or configure this Veeam Backup & Replication – it works well and has good documentation!”

The author’s personal opinion about Veeam:

Veeam is the most well-known backup solution on this list, or at least one of the most popular. It does focus on its VM-related backup capabilities, but the solution itself is also suitable, to some extent, for working with other environments: physical, cloud, applications, and more. It is a fast and scalable solution that has plenty to offer to practically every possible client type, from small startups and small businesses to massive enterprises. At the same time, it can be quite difficult to learn all of its capabilities, security levels are questionable, and the pricing of the solution is well above the market average.

Bacula Enterprise

Bacula Enterprise is a highly reliable backup and recovery software that presents an assortment of functions, like data backup, recovery, data protection, disaster recovery capabilities and more. It offers especially high security and is primarily targeted at medium enterprises and larger companies. Bacula provides an unusually large range of different features, from various storage types and easy setup to low deployment costs and extra-fast data recovery times. It works with practically any (actually, more than 34) Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), and many other operating systems, too, like Microsoft, MacOS X, Solaris, and more. Bacula’s unique modular architecture provides even greater protection against ransomware and other attacks. It offers a choice (or combination) of both command line and Web-based GUI’s. Its broad range of security features and many additional high performance, enterprise-grade technologies, such as advanced deduplication, compression, and additional backup levels make it a favorite among HPC and mission-critical, demanding enterprises. The licensing model also avoids charging per data volume, which makes it especially attractive to MSPs, ISVs, Telcos, Military and Research establishments, large data centers and governmental organizations.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 9.7/10 stars based on 63 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.7/5 stars based on 56 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Especially high security levels and deployment flexibility
• Job scheduling is incredibly useful for many reasons
• Creates an effective backup and disaster recovery framework
• Support for many different data environments, such as servers, database-types, VM-types, Cloud interfaces, in-cloud apps, etc.
• Users pay for only the technology they use, creating even more savings
• Works with practically any kind of storage and storage device
• Easily scales up to petabyte-sized environments
• High flexibility for complicated or demanding workloads

Shortcomings:

• Web interface’s broad functionality requires time to master
• The initial setup process takes time, usually because of its implementation into diverse environments.
• Additional price for plugins that are not included in the basic solution package

Pricing:

• Bacula Enterprise’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website, meaning that the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote.
• Bacula Enterprise offers a variety of different subscription plans, although there is no pricing available for any of them:
  • BSBE – Bacula Small Business Edition covers no more than 20 agents and 2 contracts, offering features such as web support and BWeb management suite
  • Standard covers up to 50 agents and 2 contracts, adds support answer deadlines (from 1 to 4 business days)
  • Bronze covers up to 200 agents and 2 contracts, offers phone support and shorter deadlines for customer support (from 6 hours to 4 days)
  • Silver covers up to 500 agents and 3 contracts, introduces a deduplication plugin and a lower customer support answer deadline (from 4 hours to 2 days)
  • Gold covers up to 2000 agents and 5 contracts, drastically reduces customer support answer deadline (from 1 hour to 2 days)
  • Platinum covers up to 5000 agents and 5 contracts, has PostgreSQL catalog support and one training seat per year for Administrator courses
• Unofficial sources claim that Bacula Enterprise’s pricing starts at $500 per month

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Jefferson Lessa – TrustRadius – “During these two years, we have been using Bacula Enterprise as a backup and disaster recovery solution for our entire data environment. This tool solved the problems we had in monitoring backups and in the agility to recover information. We are currently using this solution for more than 2Tb of data in a primarily virtualized environment. Bacula Enterprise’s technical support has perfectly met all the needs we’ve had in recent years. The installation of the tool was easy and the entire team adapted well to the daily use of this solution.”
• Eloi Cunha – TrustRadius – “Currently, the Brazilian Naval Supply System Command uses Bacula Enterprise to backup and restore the database. As a result, we have advanced features and the ability to handle the high volume of data we need for daily life, performing snapshots, advanced deduplication, single-file restores efficiently and reliably. I can detail as pros & cons the following personal use cases. Reliability and great cost-benefit. 
• Davilson Aguiar – TrustRadius – “Here at Prodap, we have been struggling for a long time to access backup software that is good and affordable, we found Bacula as the best value for money. Right from the start, it solved our compression problem because the others we used weren’t very efficient about it. It made us take up less storage.”

The author’s personal opinion about Bacula Enterprise:

I may be a bit biased, but I believe that Bacula Enterprise is one of the best possible options on the backup and recovery market for both large companies and enterprises. It is a versatile backup solution with many features and capabilities. Bacula has a system of modules that extend the functionality in some way, such as native integration into VMware, Proxmox, Hyper-V and Kubernetes. Bacula offers a modular architecture, a broad variety of supported operating systems, and impressively flexible support for specific storage types or data formats. Above all, Bacula’s superior levels of security and its ability to mold those security layers into an organization’s (often very) specific needs cannot be overstated in today’s world of aggressive ransomware and other security attacks.  It takes a little time to learn initially, and users should have at least some Linux knowledge, but the wealth of features available to even an average Bacula user is more than worth the effort it takes to learn it.

Acronis Cyber Backup

Acronis is a well-known competitor in the software market, and its Cyber Backup solution upholds the company’s standards, offering a secure and effective backup solution for multiple use cases. Acronis protects your information from a wide variety of threats, including software failures, hardware problems, cyber-attacks, accidents, and so on. There are also more features in the same field, such as in-depth monitoring and reporting, minimized user downtime, the ability to ensure if a backup is authentic or not, and so on.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.1/5 stars based on 75 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 5.9/10 stars based on 139 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 700 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Compatible with a large variety of workloads
• AI-based malware protection
• Easy data collection operations

Shortcomings:

• The solution’s pricing is significantly above the market average
• The backup agent is incredibly demanding on system hardware
• The user interface is confusing and is outdated relative to its competitors

Pricing:

• Acronis Cyber Protect’s backup capabilities vary in pricing, depending on the nature of the backup target:
  • From $109 for one workstation, be it physical or virtual, macOS or Windows
  • From $779 for one server, be it physical or virtual, Linux or Windows
  • From $439 for a 3-pack of public cloud virtual machines
  • From $1,019 for one virtual host, be it Hyper-V or VMware (no limitations on the number of virtual machines per host)
  • From $209 for 5 seats in Microsoft 365 with full coverage (across SharePoint Online, Teams, OneDrive for Business or Exchange Online)
• Acronis Cyber Protect – Backup Advanced offers file-level backups, image-based backups, incremental/differential backups, ransomware protection, vulnerability assessment, group management, AD integration, reports, and more.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Gábor S. – Capterra – “Easy to operate because cloud backup can be performed with the same configuration as on-premises. Pricing is more economical than other services. An introductory one for those who do not use cloud services. We only restored the server as a test, but we converted the image to a model different from the physical server. Servers can be restored even in case of fire or disaster damage.”
• Chase R. – Capterra – “A solid backup solution when it works. Once it works it tends to stay working. The only issue is if it’s not working, you will have to figure it out on your own, next to no support!”

The author’s personal opinion about Acronis:

As a company, Acronis offers backup and recovery software for different use cases, primarily large-scale enterprises. Data security is always its sharpest focus and it claims to be able to protect its users against cyber-attacks, hardware failures, software issues, and even the ever-present “human factor” in the form of accidental data deletion. It includes AI-based malware protection, extensive backup encryption, and backup-related features that are really good. However, scalability is limited, integration with some databases, VMs and containers is limited, its interface is a touch confusing at times, and the solution itself is often described as “very expensive.” Still, many small and medium companies would gladly pay Acronis to safeguard their data.

Cohesity

Cohesity is more of an “all-in-one” solution, capable of working with both regular applications and VMs. Its scalability is quite impressive, as well, thanks to its cluster-like structure with nodes. Cohesity stores backups in app-native formats and uses NAS protocols to manipulate a variety of data types. Its data restoration speed is good, as well. Unfortunately, the pricing model isn’t particularly flexible and some specific objectives, like MS Exchange or SharePoint granular recovery, are covered only by separate modules that are separately priced.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.6/5 stars based on 51 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.5/10 stars based on 86 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 47 customer reviews

Advantages:

• User-friendly interface
• Simple and fast implementation
• Convenience of seeing all clusters in a single screen

Shortcomings:

• Cannot perform backups on a specific date of the calendar
• Database backup process is inconvenient and needlessly convoluted
• Automation capabilities are very basic

Pricing:

• Cohesity’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website, meaning the only way to obtain it information is by contacting the company directly for a free trial or a guided demo.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Justin H. – Capterra – “Backing up entire VM’s through vCenter is a breeze and works well. Application backups (Exchange, SQL, AD) will all require an agent and the agent management is very poor in my opinion. Replication works fine and restore times from locally cached data is quick. There are still a lot of little things that keep this from being a polished solution but the overall product is good.”
• Michael H. – Capterra – “Cohesity has been excellent to work with. The local team is always helpful and responsive, support is excellent, and the product exceeds all expectations. We started small because we were uncertain that they could do all of the things we heard about during the pre-sale process, but we couldn’t be happier with the product. We are currently in the process of tripling our capacity and adding additional features because we were so impressed by every aspect of Cohesity.”

The author’s personal opinion about Cohesity:

Cohesity’s feature set is a good example of a middle-ground enterprise-grade data protection solution. Its feature set has everything you would expect from a backup solution at this level: support for a variety of data types and storage environments, impressive backup/restoration speed, an impressive list of backup-centric features, and more. What’s interesting about Cohesity specifically is its infrastructure: the entire solution is built using a node-like structure that allows for impressive scalability that is both fast and relatively simple to use. Cohesity’s interface is rather user-friendly in comparison with other software on the market, but database backup with Cohesity is not particularly simple or easy, and there are few, if any, automation capabilities available. Container backup needs much more work, and reporting is also limited.

IBM Storage Protect

IBM’s prime goal is to make data protection as simple as it gets, no matter the storage type or data type. IBM Storage Protect (formerly known as Spectrum Protect or Tivoli Storage Manager) is one such solution, offering impressive data protection capabilities at scale with impressive security capabilities, like encryption. There are many different features, like basic backup and recovery jobs, disaster recovery, bare metal recovery, and so on. The solution itself is based on an agentless virtual environment and works well with both VMware and Hyper-V environments. The licensing model is charged per TB spent, no matter the data type, which makes it cheaper in some specific cases with large amounts of data processing.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 7.8/10 stars based on 41 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 77 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The convenience of a single backup solution for a complex environment with multiple storage types
• A wealth of backup-related options, such as granular recovery and integration with third-party tools
• Its documentation and logging capabilities are highly regarded

Shortcomings:

• Setting up and configuring the solution properly requires time and resources
• Solution’s GUI is confusing and takes time to master
• The complexity of the architecture is significantly higher than average

Pricing:

• The only pricing information that IBM offers to the public is the cost of its IBM Storage Protect for Cloud option, which is calculated using a dedicated web page.
• IBM Storage Protect for Cloud is compatible with five primary categories of software, including:
  • Microsoft 365 – starting from $1.52 per user per month.
  • Microsoft Entra ID – starting from $1.01 per user per month.
  • Salesforce – starting from $1.52 per user per month.
  • Dynamics 365 – starting from $1.34 per user per month.
  • Google Workspace – starting from $1.27 per user per month.
• We should note here that IBM offers volume discounts for companies purchasing 500 or more seats at once.
• At the same time, there is a dedicated toggle that adds “unlimited storage in IBM’s Azure Cloud,” which raises most of the above mentioned prices accordingly:
  • Microsoft 365 – starting from $4.22 per user per month.
  • Salesforce – starting from $4.22 per user per month.
  • Dynamics 365 – starting from $3.37 per user per month.
  • Google Workspace – starting from $3.18 per user per month.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Naveen Sharma – TrustRadius – “Tivoli (TSM) software is best for the policy-based management of file-level backups with automatic data migration between storage tiers. It’s the best way to save on the cost of storage and other resources. I really like the deduplication functionality of source and destination data, which helps to save the network bandwidth and storage resources. The administration of Tivoli is still complex, which means you need good skills to manage this product. Although a new version is coming with a better GUI, it will still require good command-line skills to make Tivoli do everything.”
• Gerardo Fernandez Ruiz – TrustRadius – “If you also need to have an air-gapped solution, Spectrum Protect has the option of sending the backup to tape (and it can also replicate the information to another site if needed).”

The author’s personal opinion about IBM Spectrum:

IBM Spectrum is a lesser-known backup solution from a well-known technology company. This is the same company that is known more for its hardware than for its software. However, IBM Spectrum is still a good backup and recovery solution for large companies. It is simple, feature-rich, agentless, and supports a wide variety of different storage types. It also excels at what is often perceived as the weakest part of enterprise backup solutions: reporting and logging capabilities. The solution in question is a bit difficult to configure initially, and the overall interface of the solution is regularly described as rather confusing, with the individual elements of the solution creating the most substantial issues. But, taken as a whole, the solution is rather impressive.

Dell Data Protection Suite

Dell Data Protection Suite is a comprehensive data protection solution that should work for most companies of any size. Data protection levels are variable, user-friendly UI allows for easy data protection visualisation, and built-in continuous data protection technology (CDP) allows for fast recovery times in VM environments. There are also several different applications in the package, as well, such as the separate backup in the cloud, the support for more storage types, data isolation/data recovery/data analytics automatization, and so on.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 8.0/10 stars based on 6 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 20 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Support for plenty of different OS types
• Great for large databases and enterprises
• Interface user-friendliness

Shortcomings:

• Backups could fail if some elements in the system are different from before
• Error reports are somewhat confusing
• A lot of complains about the customer support

Pricing:

• Dell Data Protection Suite’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote or a demo.
• The unofficial information suggests that Dell’s pricing starts at $99 per year per single workspace

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Cem Y. – G2 – “I like Dell Data Protection very much because it helps me to protect my personal computers as well as my work computers against malicious attacks. It has a very user-friendly interface. You can protect your passwords, personal information perfectly. There are some properties of Dell Data Protection. I don’t understand some reports that it produces. It is hard to figure out what the problem is and which solution I need to apply. Its price could also be much more affordable. There may be some different price policies.”
• Chris T. – G2 – “The compliance reporting dashboard is terrific as it provides a quick overview of endpoint compliance. This tool is very taxing on older systems particularly when it does its initial encryption pass of the entire drive.”

The author’s personal opinion about Dell Data Protection Suite:

This is another good example of enterprise backup software from Dell, a company better known for its hardware appliances than its software. Dell Data Protection Suite is not the first backup solution from this company, but it is a decent enterprise backup tool. It offers a user-friendly interface, plenty of centralization capabilities, a variety of features and functions in the realm of backup operations, and more. It supports many different operating systems and storage types, making it a great fit for large-scale businesses and enterprises. At the same time, the solution has its share of problems, from inconsistent customer support reviews to confusing backup error messages and limits on certain technologies and reporting capabilities.

Veritas Backup Exec

If you’re looking for a company that has a long history, Veritas is the one for you, with its several decades of company success. Its backup and recovery capabilities are quite extensive, with information governance, cloud data management, and other brand-new functions. You choose from either the deployable version of their solution or the integratable appliance. Veritas is highly favored by older legacy companies that prefer services that have proven themselves over time. However, users report that there are some problems with hardware scaling capacity, as well as other little ’niggles’ here and there.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.2/5 stars based on 12 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 6.9/10 stars based on 163 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 272 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The sheer number of features available to customers
• Praise-worthy GUI
• Excellent customer support

Shortcomings:

• Working with LTO tape libraries is problematic
• Cannot export reports to a PDF file without Adobe Reader installed on that same system
• Automated reports cannot be saved to a different location on a different server

Pricing:

• Veritas’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain pricing information is by contacting the company directly.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Mark McCardell – TrustRadius – “Veritas Backup Exec is best suited for <1PB environments that deal with typical Windows & Linux file storage arrays. Once you delve into more sophisticated storage environments, there are no available agents for those environments.”
• Taryn F. – Capterra – “Veritas Backup Exec is a good choice for small to medium businesses with a relatively simple set up , not requiring many different agents to be backed up, and without excess amounts of data. The licensing model is complicated and can be expensive, but I have seen great changes in the options supplied now – such as the Per VM model”

The author’s personal opinion about Veritas:

Veritas is considered an average enterprise backup solution, to a certain degree: it offers most of the features that one would expect in a similar solution, be it support for plenty of different environments or a variety of features for data security, data backups, etc. Veritas’ discerning feature is, to a certain degree, its legacy. As a provider of backup software, Veritas has been around a long time, even by this market’s standards, and during that time, it has managed to accumulate many positive reviews over the years. This experience and reputation are what many older and more conservative businesses are looking for, which is why Veritas still has many clients and acquires new ones on a regular basis. Veritas also has several very specific shortcomings, such as the lack of proper LTO tape support as backup storage, which is a massive detriment for specific users.

NAKIVO

Nakivo Backup & Replication is another competitor on the list that was developed by a much larger company in general. Its backup solution is reliable, fast and works with both cloud and physical environments, offering enterprise-grade data protection and an entire package of other features, including: file recovery on-demand, incremental backup for different platforms, low backup size, impressive overall performance, and all packaged in a nice, easy-to-use, UI.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 427 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.3/10 stars based on 182 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.7/5 stars based on 278 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Easy to install and configure
• Simple and clean user interface
• Noteworthy customer support

Shortcomings:

• Error logging is limited and cannot always help to determine the cause of the error
• Limited support for physical servers running on Linux
• Higher than average price tag

Pricing:

• NAKIVO’s pricing is split into two main groups:
• Subscription-based licenses:
  • “Pro Essentials” – from $1.95 per month per workload, covers most common backup types such as physical, virtual, cloud and NAS, while also offering instant granular recovery, virtual and cloud replication, storage immutability, and more
  • “Enterprise Essentials” – from $2.60 per month per workload, adds native backup-to-tape, deduplication appliance integration, backup to cloud, as well as 2FA, AD integration, calendar, data protection based on policies, etc.
  • “Enterprise Plus” does not have public pricing available, but adds HTTP API integration, RBAC, Oracle backup, backup from snapshots, and other features
  • There is also a subscription available for Microsoft 365 coverage that costs $0.80 per month per user with annual billing and the ability to create backups of MS Teams, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, and more
  • Another subscription from NAKIVO is its VMware monitoring capability, which comes in three different forms:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $0.90 per month per workload with CPU, RAM, disk usage monitoring and a built-in live chat
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $1.15 per month per workload, which adds AD integration, 2FA capability, multi-tenant deployment, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” has no public pricing and adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • We should also mention the existence of a Real-time Replication pricing tier that offers the feature with the same name for VMware vSphere environments for $2.35 per month per workload, with 2FA support and Microsoft AD integration.
• All prices mentioned above are presented with a three-year plan in mind;  shorter contracts would have different pricing points.
• Perpetual licenses:
  • Virtual environments:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $229 per socket, covers Hyper-V, VMware, Nutanix AHV, and features such as instant granular recovery, immutable storage, cross-platform recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $329 per socket, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations, as well as backup from storage snapshots
  • Servers:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $58 per server, covers Windows and Linux, and features such as immutable storage, instant P2V (Physical-to-Virtual), instant granular recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $76 per server, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • Workstations:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $19 per workstation, covers Windows and Linux, and features such as immutable storage, instant P2V, instant granular recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $25 per workstation, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • NAS:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $149 per one Terabyte of data, with backup NFS shares, SMB shares, folders on shares, and offer file level recovery
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $199 per one Terabyte of data, adds AD integration, 2FA support, calendar, multi-tenant deployment, etc.
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • Oracle DB:
    • “Enterprise Plus” is the only option available for Oracle database backups via RMAN, it offers advanced scheduling, centralized management, and more for $165 per database.
  • VMware monitoring:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $100 per socket with CPU, RAM, disk usage monitoring and a built-in live chat
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $150 per socket that adds AD integration, 2FA capability, multi-tenant deployment, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • Real-time Replication:
    • Enterprise Essentials for $550 per socket with a basic feature set.
    • Enterprise Plus with no public price tag that offers RBAC support, HTTP API integration, etc.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Ed H. – Capterra – “We got tired of the massive cost of renewals from our past backup software providers and decided to try Nakivo instead. They supported our need for Nutanix AHV, QNAP and Tape backups. I’m looking forward to trying the new PostgreSQL database option soon so that I can build my own reports. Nakivo gets the job done and gets better with each version.”
• Joerg S. – Capterra – “We are using Nakivo B&R for our new server with quite a number of virtual machines (VM Ware). Backup of data is onto a Synology via 10GB/s. The backup makes use of all available network speed. Once you understand how it works, its configuration is straightforward. Whenever we experienced some issues, Nakivo Service was very helpful (GoTo meeting) and pretty fast (next day at the latest). So far no complaints on their response.”

The author’s personal opinion about NAKIVO:

NAKIVO does not have decades of experience behind it, and it is definitely not the most feature-rich solution on this market. However, none of these factors make NAKIVO a poor choice for enterprise data backup software. To the contrary, it is a versatile enterprise backup and recovery system that is fast, responsive, and relatively easy to work with. NAKIVO offers on-demand file recovery, impressive backup performance, easy first-time configuration, and an impressive customer support team. However, NAKIVO’s services are rather expensive, and it shares the bane of most backup solutions: lackluster reporting/logging capability. Storage destinations are also limited.

Commvault

Commvault is all about applying the cutting-edge technologies of their data backup and recovery solution to provide the best experience possible with various file types, data sources, backup types, and storage locations. Commvault is known for the  pinpoint accuracy of its backups for VMs, databases or endpoints, VM recovery, unstructured data backup, data transfer, etc. Commvault integrates with more than a dozen cloud storage providers, including VMware, AWS, Azure, and many more. On the other hand, there are some areas in which Commvault falls short, according to some customer reviews, such as UI friendliness.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.6/5 stars based on 47 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.7/10 stars based on 226 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 160 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Easy connection with complex IT infrastructures
• A significant number of integrations to choose from
• Backup configuration is simple

Shortcomings:

• Not the most beginner-friendly solution on the market
• Takes a significant amount of time to set up and configure
• Basic logging functions are lacking

Pricing:

• Commvault’s pricing information is not publicly available on its official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a demo showcase or a free 30-day trial.
• The unofficial information suggests that Commvault’s hardware appliances’ price ranges from $3,400 to $8,781 per month.

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Sean F. – Capterra – “We’ve been using Commvault’s backup product for several years now and although a complex product due to all it can do it is still the best I’ve used in a corporate environment. In my opinion it really is only for larger businesses but I can see how a small business could still get some benefits from the product. We use it to backup our File, Email, Database servers and all of our VMware virtual infrastructure. As everything is located in one console you don’t have to go far to find what you need and there are agents for nearly any operating system or application typically used in an enterprise environment.”
• Doug M. – Capterra – “As the title says “Migrated to Hyperscale and no looking back”. We have great sales people and excellent support from Commvault.”

The author’s personal opinion about Commvault:

Commvault is a relatively standard enterprise-grade backup solution that uses a variety of cutting-edge technologies to provide its customers with the best possible user experience. Commvault works with containers, cloud storage, VMs, databases, endpoints, and more. It delivers a fast and accurate backup and recovery experience, it is integratable with a variety of cloud storage providers, and it is relatively easy to set up backup tasks with it. However, Commvault is not known for its low prices. At the same time, it suffers from a lack of logging/reporting data for most of its features, and its first-time setup is notoriously long and complicated.

Druva

It is now fairly common for any company’s data to be spread across hundreds of different devices, due to workforce mobility and the rapid rise of various cloud services. Unfortunately, this change also makes it rather difficult to ensure that each and every device storing the company’s data is properly protected. Services like Druva Cloud Platform come in handy in these situations, offering a wealth of data management options across different devices and applications. The platform itself works as-a-service and offers easier backup and recovery operations, better data visibility, less complex device management, as well as a range of regulatory and compliance operations.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 17 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.7/10 stars based on 489 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.7/5 stars based on 614 customer reviews

Advantages:

• GUI as a whole receives a lot of praise
• Backup immutability and data encryption are just an example of how serious Druva is when it comes to data security
• Customer support is quick and useful

Shortcomings:

• First-time setup is not easy to perform by yourself
• Windows snapshots and SQL cluster backups are simplistic and barely customizable
• Slow restore speed from cloud

Pricing:

• Druva’s pricing is fairly sophisticated, with different pricing plans depending on the type of device or application that is covered. Actual prices have also now been deleted from the public pricing web page, leaving only the detailed explanation of the pricing model itself intact.
• Hybrid workloads:
  • “Hybrid business” – calculated per Terabyte of data after deduplication, offering an easy business backup with plenty of features such as global deduplication, VM file level recovery, NAS storage support, etc.
  • “Hybrid enterprise” – calculated per Terabyte of data after deduplication, an extension of the previous offering with LTR (long term retention) features, storage insights/recommendations, cloud cache, etc.
  • “Hybrid elite” – calculated per Terabyte of data after deduplication, adds cloud disaster recovery to the previous package, creating the ultimate solution for data management and disaster recovery
  • There are also features that Druva sells separately, such as accelerated ransomware recovery, cloud disaster recovery (available to Hybrid elite users), security posture & observability, and deployment for U.S. government cloud
• SaaS applications:
  • “Business” – calculated per user, the most basic package of SaaS app coverage (Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, the price is calculated per single app), offers 5 storage regions, 10 GB of storage per user, as well as basic data protection
  • “Enterprise” – calculated per user for either/or Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace coverage with features such as groups, public folders, as well as Salesforce.com coverage (includes metadata restore, automated backups, compare tools, etc.)
  • “Elite” – calculated per user for Microsoft 365/Google Workspace, Salesforce, includes GDPR compliance check, eDiscovery enablement, federated search, GCC High support, and many other features
  • Some features here are also purchasable separately, such as Sandbox seeding (Salesforce), Sensitive data governance (Google Workspace & Microsoft 365), GovCloud support (Microsoft 365), etc.
• Endpoints:
  • “Enterprise” – calculated per user, offer SSO (Single Sign-On) support, CloudCache, DLP support, data protection per data source, and 50 Gb of storage per user with delegated administration
  • “Elite” – calculated per user, adds features such as federated search, additional data collection, defensible deletion, advanced deployment capabilities, and more
  • There are also plenty of features that could be purchased separately here, including advanced deployment capabilities (available in the Elite subscription tier), ransomware recovery/response, sensitive data governance, and GovCloud support.
• AWS workloads:
  • “Freemium” is a free offering from Druva for AWS workload coverage, it covers up to 20 AWS resources at once (no more than 2 accounts), while offering features such as VPC cloning, cross-region and cross-account DR, file-level recovery, AWS Organizations integration, API access, etc.
  • “Enterprise” – calculated per resource, starting from 20 resources, has an upper limit of 25 accounts and extends upon the previous version’s capabilities with features such as data lock, file-level search, the ability to import existing backups, the ability to prevent manual deletion, 24/7 support with 4 hours of response time at most, etc.
  • “Elite” – calculated per resource, has no limitations on managed resources or accounts, adds auto-protection by VPC, AWS account, as well as GovCloud support and less than 1 hour of support response time guaranteed by SLA.
  • Users of Enterprise and Elite pricing plans also have the ability to purchase the capability to save air-gapped EC2 backups to Druva Cloud for an additional price.
• It is easy to see how one gets confused with Druva’s pricing scheme as a whole. Luckily, Druva themselves have a webpage dedicated to creating a personalized estimate of a company’s TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) with Druva in just a few minutes (a pricing calculator).

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Andy T. – Capterra – “Our original POC when testing this product was very thorough and we were given ample time to test it and make sure it was going to fit how we needed it. Setting it up was incredibly easy and we were able to figure out a lot of the features on our own with minimal help. When we needed help, the team we were working with was great. We also had to work with support and that was great as well.”
• Dinesh Y. – Capterra – “My experience with Druva endpoint is amazing. From the time of onboarding this software I am not worried about data loss of the users. But I think Druva should consider more discounts for NGO’s as well as corporate so that everyone can use it extensively.”

The author’s personal opinion about Druva:

Druva’s cloud backup platform was built to solve the rather popular problem of managing hundreds of different devices within the same system, which is why it is rather obvious that Druva’s solution mainly targets large businesses and enterprises. The solution itself is provided on a SaaS basis, capable of protecting a wide variety of devices, including endpoints, databases, VMs, physical storage, and so on. Druva’s solution offers a wealth of backup and recovery features, impressive data protection capabilities, and compliance with a number of legal and regulatory standards. Druva’s pricing model is rather confusing, first-time setup is not an easy process, and it is unlikely to work well for an organization with large data volumes. Integration with some VM’s and databases is also very limited.

Zerto

Zerto is a good choice in a multifunctional backup management platform with a variety of features. It offers everything you’d want from a modern backup and restore solution: CDP (continuous data protection), minimal vendor lock-in, and more. It is used with many different storage types, ensuring complete data coverage from the start.

Zerto has offered data protection as one of its core strategies from day one, offering applications the ability to be generated with protection from the start. Zerto also has many automation capabilities, is capable of providing extensive insights, and works with different cloud storages at once.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 25 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.3/10 stars based on 122 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 73 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Management simplicity for disaster recovery tasks
• Ease of integration with existing infrastructures, both on-premise and in the cloud
• Workload migration capabilities and plenty of other features

Shortcomings:

• Is only be deployed on Windows operating systems
• Reporting features are somewhat rigid
• Is rather expensive for large enterprises and businesses
• Limited scalability

Pricing:

• The official Zerto website offers three different licensing categories – Zerto for VMs and Zerto for SaaS
• Zerto for VMs includes:
  • “Enterprise Cloud Edition” as a multi-cloud mobility, disaster recovery, and ransomware resilience solution
  • “Migration License” as a dedicated license for data center refreshes, infrastructure modernization, and cloud migration
• Zerto for SaaS, on the other hand, is a single solution that covers M365, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Zendesk, and more
• There is no official pricing information available for Zerto’s solution, it is acquired only via a personalized quote or purchased through one of Zerto’s sales partners

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Rick D. – Capterra – “Zerto software and their amazing support team have allowed my company to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue by making it easy to migrate clients from Hyper-V or VMware to our VMware infrastructure.”
• AMAR M. – Capterra – “It’s a great software for any large organization. We use it both as a backup utility and DR site. Both sites work flawlessly without any issues. Support is a little hard to get but they are quite fast at responding, just not with the correct tech.”

The author’s personal opinion about Zerto:

Zerto is an interesting option for medium-sized backup and recovery workloads. As a dedicated backup management platform, it was purpose-built to handle such tasks in the first place. Zerto’s main solution offers ransomware resilience, data mobility, and disaster recovery in a single package, while also being capable of working with a variety of different storage options. It is a Windows-exclusive solution, and the price tag tends to scale up quickly for large companies, but the ability to perform workload migrations and integrate with different systems is usually worth far more than any price tag for large companies. Security and scalability may, however, be a significant concern for larger organizations.

Barracuda

Barracuda is a fairly unusual company, in that it offers configurable multifunctional backup appliances as a way to provide backup and recovery features. Barracuda Backup creates backups of applications, emails, and regular data. It offers extensive deduplication, data encryption, centralized data management, and plenty of other features in the backup and recovery department.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 7.6/10 stars based on 103 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 52 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Barracuda’s user interface is relatively simple and easy to navigate, and creating backup jobs is a rather intuitive process
• Separate schedules could be set up for every single source that is backed up by Barracuda Backup’s appliance
• Data retention is also completely customizable and allows for every backup source to be customized separately

Shortcomings:

• Barracuda’s pricing policy is not what you would call egregious, but it is high enough for plenty of smaller businesses to not use it purely because they cannot afford it in the long run
• The solution’s reporting capabilities are rather basic and filtering through multiple reports is a bit of a problem
• Every first-time loading of the solution takes quite a lot of time, no matter how fast the connection or the hardware in question actually is.
• Lacks Kubernetes support
• Disaster Recovery has some strict limitations

Pricing (at time of writing):

• There is no specific public pricing available for Barracuda Backup, only by requesting a personalized quote.
• The way Barracuda collects data for such a quote is rather interesting: there is an entire configuration tool available that allows potential customers to choose from a number of options for Barracuda to better understand the client’s needs.
• This tool takes the user through five different steps before dropping the user to the last page with the request to “contact Barracuda to proceed,” including:
  • Physical Locations – offers the ability to show how many different locations the client wants to cover, as well as the amount of raw data necessary (the basic setting is 1 location and 3TB of data)
  • Deployment – the ability to choose between deployment options, there are three options to choose from: physical appliance, virtual appliance, and managed service
  • Offsite Replication – an optional feature to replicate your data somewhere as an offsite storage, there is a choice between Barracuda’s own cloud, AWS, network transfer to another physical location, or no replication at all (this particular option is not recommended)
  • Office 365 Backup – a short and simple choice between choosing to create backups of existing Office 365 data or to decline the option if you do not wish this data to be backed up or there is no data at all
  • Support Options – a choice between three possible options, including the basic update package and the 8-to-5 customer support, an option with instant equipment replacement in case of a hardware failure and the 24/7 customer support, and a separate option for a dedicated team of engineers to be assigned to your specific company’s case

Customer reviews (original spelling):

• Amanda Wiens – TrustRadius – “With the Barracuda Backup tool, we have all unified and centralized management. And regardless of location, we have a single console for managing cloud and simplifying everything. In our scenario, it is a large environment, and we recommend using a virtual infrastructure with a great fiber link. Backups and restoration are speedy and secure. It is undoubtedly the best solution in this field.”
• Josh McClelland – TrustRadius – “For larger environments, with virtual infrastructure in place, and the network bandwidth to support it, a Barracuda backup is great. It’s easy to back up an entire cluster, or just a single server. When it comes to restoring or spinning up a downed machine, the Barracuda Backup is second to none in these sorts of environments. For the smaller clients, with budget concerns, only a few servers, not having the ability to spin up a failed server on the backup appliance itself is a little painful since we’d have to replace the physical hardware before getting services back online. I think having this ability would make for a great selling point to those smaller to medium size businesses that could benefit from this product.”

The author’s personal opinion about Barracuda Backup:

Barracuda Backup is an interesting take on a hardware-based backup solution, using hardware appliances to provide data backups, email backups, application backups, and more. Its interface is easy to work with, and the solution also offers quite a lot of customization at different levels of the backup process. There’s also Barracuda Backup’s rather basic set of reporting features. Because the solution relies heavily on hardware, rather than software, the price of the solution is that much higher, which could be too much for smaller or middle-sized businesses, but that factor is not as important for large-scale enterprises that would be willing to pay a higher price for complete data protection for their information. Overall though, there have been significant questions about Barracuda Backup’s tech support, scheduling manager, and user interface.

Feature and Capability Comparison for Each Backup Solution

The amount of information presented above is sure to overwhelm some readers, especially when comparing specific solutions with one another. To try and mitigate that issue, we have also created a table comparing all software we reviewed, across several different parameters:

• Deduplication support
• Container (OpenStack, Docker, etc.) support
• Mobile app support
• CDP (Continuous Data Protection) support
• Immutable backup support

These specific solutions were chosen for this comparison for one simple reason. Most of these backup solutions are well-known and respected in the enterprise software field, which makes it difficult to find basic features and functions that some solutions do not have. For example, parameters such as cloud support, disaster recovery, and data encryption were excluded simply because every single solution on the list already has them, completely invalidating the whole point of comparing software with one another.

As such, we have chosen five different parameters that are actually comparable across multiple software examples.

This table is also separated into two halves equal in size to simplify its navigation for the end user. The separation itself is based solely on the convenience for the reader.

It should be noted that all software is being improved and expanding on a regular basis, which is why it would also be a good idea to double-check the software’s capabilities before choosing one of these options.

Enterprise Backup Software Best Practices: Key Features to Prioritize

Selecting the right enterprise backup solution requires careful evaluation of many technical and business factors that will impact your organization’s data protection strategy. The following key considerations are presented with the goal of helping to identify which backup software best aligns with specific organizational requirements of each company. Considerations in question are:

• Extensive data protection
• Support for different backup policies
• Deduplication and compression
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Support for different storage media types
• Flexible data retention
• Scalability and performance requirements
• Performance benchmarks and scalability metrics
• Integration and compatibility needs
• Vendor support and service level agreements

Extensive Data Protection

Features such as backup immutability, backup data encryption, 3-2-1 rule support, and granular access control lists are essential for protecting information against any kind of tampering. Enterprises across the world are constant targets of ransomware attacks of all kinds, so protection of backed up data must be at its strongest.

Support for Various Backup Policies and Backup Levels

Different backup variations are suitable for specific use cases and situations. Full backups are slow, but include all of the folders and files within the backed up environment. Differential backups copy only those files modified since the last full backup. Incremental backups cover only data modified since the previous backup, no matter the type. Enterprise-ready solutions frequently face large datasets, which is why the best of them also provide the opportunity to create synthetic full backups: a new full backup composed of all incrementals since the last full backup, conserving storage space, network bandwidth and budgets.

Deduplication and Compression

Data deduplication and compression are both essential for reducing storage costs and improving backup performance for enterprise environments. Deduplication eliminates redundant data blocks, storing only unique data segments and achieving significant storage reduction ratios, depending on organizational duplication patterns and data types. Compression further reduces storage requirements with efficient data encoding, commonly achieving 2:1 or even 4:1 space savings. Enterprise backup solutions must support both local and global deduplication, while also offering flexible compression options that balance CPU resource consumption and storage savings. These technologies have a direct impact on the TCO, due to their ability to reduce storage infrastructure requirements, network bandwidth utilization during replication, and long-term archival costs.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Minimal downtime and ensured business continuity are critical parameters for enterprises, so backup solutions for enterprises must offer automated failover for business-critical systems and support high availability infrastructures. Data replication to offsite storage like tape is also necessary for resilience. A very important aspect of a successful DR (Disaster Recovery) is bare metal backup and recovery, which should be supported for both Windows and Linux environments.

Support for Different Storage Media Types

The majority of enterprises run sophisticated systems that consist of multiple storage types with complex infrastructures. The ability to support different storage media types, be it on-premise servers, virtual machine disks, enterprise cloud storage (both public and private), or magnetic tape, is a must-have for any enterprise backup solution. With the rise of 3-2-1 rule, air gapping and other security measures, enterprise-grade backups no longer support only one specific storage type without the ability to backup to others.

Flexibility in Data Retention Options

The capability to implement long-term and short-term data retention policies is a significant advantage in this market, because enterprises and large corporations must adhere to various regulatory requirements (including the necessary data storage time period) on the different types of data they own. A good backup solution should offer flexible retention controls, support custom deletion protocols, and automated pruning jobs.

Scalability and Performance Requirements

Enterprise backup solutions must be able to handle growing data volumes and increases in infrastructure complexity without sacrificing performance. The solution must offer reliable execution of backup and recovery operations in an integral and consistent manner, while supporting concurrent backup instances and tools to optimize data volume transmission. Support for HPC and big data IT infrastructures is also preferred in most cases, because of the need to deal with petabytes of information and millions of files on a regular basis.

Performance Benchmarks and Scalability Metrics

Measurable performance capabilities are necessary for enterprise backup solutions if they are to talk about the specifics of their performance. Backup throughput rates (5-50 TB/hour in enterprise environments in most cases), concurrent backup job handling (ability to work with 100-1000+ operations simultaneously), database backup speed and recovery time measurement (RTOs) are just a few examples of such metrics. As for the scalability metrics, they are data volume capacity limits, network bandwidth utilization efficiency, and deduplication processing speed, among others. Vendor-provided performance data must be evaluated against an organization’s specific infrastructure requirements to ensure that selected solutions would be able to handle current workloads and even accommodate future expansion without performance losses.

Integration and Compatibility Needs

Any backup solution must provide seamless integration with the existing IT infrastructure of your organization, including native support for large-scale databases (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SAP HANA), support for heterogeneous environments (different hardware and software types), and compatibility with enterprise monitoring systems and integration with enterprise BI tools. Cross-platform administration tools that are easy to use and offer extensive functionality are also high on the priority list for any professional backup software.

Vendor Support and Service Level Agreements

Enterprise backup implementations require the following in vendor support:

• Comprehensive vendor support frameworks
• Guaranteed response times for critical issues
• Multiple support channels such as phone, email, on-site, etc.
• Clear definition of escalation procedures attached to dedicated account management (for large deployments).

Service level agreements, on the other hand, must specify:

• Resolution timeframes (tiered support models ranging from basic business-hour coverage to premium 24/7 support)
• System uptime guarantees (99.9% typically)
• Support coverage hours that align with organizational operations

It is highly recommended that organizations evaluate vendor support infrastructure, including the presence of language capabilities, on-site support availability for hardware issues, regional support centers, and the track record of the vendor when it comes to meeting SLA commitments. Different support delivery models include their own range of capabilities, such as:

• Self-Service: Knowledge base, documentation, community forums
• Managed Services: Vendor manages backup infrastructure remotely
• Hybrid: Combination of professional and self-service support
• White-Glove: Dedicated support engineer assigned to account

Evaluating these factors in a systematic fashion against your company’s specific needs, current infrastructure capabilities, and future growth plans would help ensure that the selected backup solution would be able to meet both today and tomorrow’s requirements of your business.

Who are the most frequent enterprise backup solutions users?

Enterprise backup software has a very specific audience of certain user groups. Most common examples of such are:

• Government and military organizations
• HPC data centers
• Research organizations
• Fintech field
• Healthcare field
• E-commerce and retail
• Universities and education

Government and Military Organizations

Both military and government organizations work with information just as often as any other commercial company, if not more often. However, the requirements for data security and backup capabilities in these cases are much more strict and extensive, meaning that most backup solutions could not operate within these boundaries without completely changing their entire backup process. Thus, such organizations require true enterprise-grade solutions for backup.

HPC Data Centers

HPC data centers are created to analyze large data masses for analytical or AI-oriented purposes, and big data in large-scale, high-transactional databases is how these data masses are stored for further analysis or processing. However, protecting massive data volumes is not something that every backup solution is capable of, and in addition, this information must be as secure as every other data type. Enterprise backup software is the only obvious choice for such organizations, but beware: there are barely a handful of solutions that meet the typical needs of a true HPC environment. Currently, Bacula Enterprise, with its ability to handle billions of files and integrate with high performance storage and file systems, appears to be the HPC market leader.

Research Organizations

Many R&D organizations generate massive data amounts regularly. The data in question is necessary for various processes, and protecting this data is paramount for any business. The data in question includes datasets for analysis tasks, data for complex simulations, personal medical information, experiment results, etc. Many of these organizations are running IT environments that are approaching HPC specifications.

Fintech Field

Many financial tech businesses, be they banks, investment firms, insurance brokers, etc., are required to handle massive data volumes on a regular basis, often in real time. Extensive data protection solutions are necessary to protect this data, while remaining compliant with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and other regulations.

Healthcare Field

The healthcare field is an entirely separate field of work with its own set of regulations regarding sensitive data storage. Businesses dealing with protected health information must comply with regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA. Introducing an enterprise backup solution in this realm is nearly always necessary to correctly protect data, ensuring fast data recovery in case of a disaster and providing data continuity in a very demanding industry.

E-commerce and Retail

Customer data that retailers regularly collect consists of many different pieces of information, from transaction records and payment data to inventory information and more. Much of this data must be protected according to one or several regulatory frameworks. Enterprise backup solutions exist to protect and safeguard information like this, combining compliance with protection in a single package.

Universities and Education

Universities and other educational organizations typically produce and store significant volumes of data, whether students data, administrative personnel data, research data and science projects. Because of the sheer amount of data, the educational sector typically requires enterprise-level backup solutions to mitigate risks, and to manage and protect its data.

Understanding the 3-2-2 Backup Rule in Enterprise Security

The 3-2-2 backup rule is the evolution of the traditional 3-2-1 backup strategy, designed to address the increase in complexity of an average cyber threat, along with the ever-increasing enterprise data protection requirements. It is an enhanced framework that maintains the foundational principles of data redundancy and adds an extra layer of geographic protection – something that has become essential for modern enterprise environments facing increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks and natural disasters.

What is the 3-2-2 Backup Rule?

The 3-2-2 backup rule suggests using three copies of critical data, stored on two different media types, in two geographically separate locations. It is an improvement over the original 3-2-1 backup rule that required only a single offsite copy, distributing backup data across several locations to eliminate single points of failure capable of disrupting both primary and backup systems at once.

To reiterate, there are three core components to the 3-2-2 backup strategy:

1. 3 copies of data: Primary production data and two additional backup copies
2. 2 different storage media: A combination of diverse storage technologies, like tape libraries and disk arrays
3. 2 separate locations: Geographic distribution across sites, data centers, or cloud regions

Using 3-2-2 backup rule provides businesses with enhanced security using  geographic redundancy without sacrificing the performance advantages of on-site backups. In most cases, the users of this strategy store two data copies locally using different media types and maintain a third copy in a secondary data center or a geographically separate location, typically in the cloud.

Enterprise Implementation of the 3-2-2 Rule in Modern Backup Software

Implementing the 3-2-2 rule in enterprise environments requires backup software that supports complex multi-location replication workflows. Luckily, many modern enterprise backup solutions, like Commvault, Veeam, and Bacula Enterprise, have full support for automated replication between sites, which enables organizations to maintain fully synchronized copies of information across multiple geographically separate locations with minimal manual intervention.

The selection of storage media is critical for this framework, with most businesses choosing high-performance disk arrays as primary backup storage, tape libraries as low-cost storage for retention purposes, and cloud storage as the means of achieving geographic distribution.

For the 3-2-2 backup strategy to work, it is critically important to ensure that each media type operates independently, avoiding cascading failures that compromise multiple copies of the data at once. As for long-term archival strategies, they often have dedicated storage tiers, with Amazon Glacier Deep Archive or Azure Archive Storage being prime examples of compliance-driven retention requirements spanning multiple years.

The implementation process itself normally includes three major steps:

• Configuring primary backup jobs to be stored using local storage media
• Establishing automated rules for replication to a secondary on-premises location (or private cloud)
• Setting up cloud integration to create third geographic copy

Most enterprise backup platforms achieve these goals using policy-based automation, which ensures consistent protection levels without becoming an overwhelming burden for the IT department.

Ensuring Recovery Success and Compliance of 3-2-2 Backups

The effectiveness of the 3-2-2 backup approach hinges on regular verification and testing procedures, validating data integrity of all copies and locations. Automated backup verification processes are highly recommended here, checking data consistency, performing recovery tests, and maintaining thorough audit trails for compliance.

Recovery planning must also take into account various failure scenarios, from localized hardware failures to regional disasters, all of which have their own approaches to remediation. Luckily, the 3-2-2 framework offers flexible recovery options. IT teams optimize the organization’s recovery time objectives by choosing the most appropriate backup copy from which to recover, depending on the nature of the incident.

As for organizations that are subject to regulatory requirements, the 3-2-2 rule complies with regulatory frameworks mandating data protection across multiple locations. It also satisfies requirements for business continuity planning and offers documented evidence of robust data protection measures during regulatory reviews or audits.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms gives enterprise decision-makers an authoritative assessment of leading vendors in the market. This research is conducted annually by Gartner analysts, evaluating vendors based on their ability to execute current market requirements, along with their completeness of vision for future market direction. This analysis serves as an important reference material for enterprise organizations investing in backup infrastructure, making it easier to understand vendor capabilities, market positioning, and strategic direction in the modern-day backup landscape.

Gartner’s Evaluation Criteria for Enterprise Backup Solutions

Gartner evaluates enterprise backups with a comprehensive two-dimensional framework, assessing the current capabilities and the future potential of different options. The evaluation methodology serves as an objective criteria for comparing vendors across a variety of critical factors.

Ability to Execute measures the vendor’s current market performance and operational capabilities. This dimension evaluates several important factors, including:

• Product or service quality and features
• Overall financial viability
• Sales execution
• Pricing strategies
• Market responsiveness
• Track record
• Marketing execution effectiveness
• Customer experience delivery

Gartner weights these criteria differently, with market responsiveness and product/service capabilities considered the most important factors, followed by customer experience. Marketing execution, on the other hand, is considered the least important factor on this list.

Completeness of Vision measures a vendor’s strategic understanding and future market direction. In this dimension, the assessment focuses on a completely different range of factors, such as:

• Market understanding
• Alignment with customer requirements
• Effectiveness of marketing and sales strategy
• Offering and product strategy innovation
• Sustainability of the business model
• Vertical and industry strategy focus
• Geographic market strategy
• Capabilities of innovation and differentiation

Market understanding, product strategy, and innovation are the most important factors here, according to Gartner, while vertical strategy is the least valuable point on the list.

The intersection of these two dimensions creates four distinct quadrants that provide insight into how each vendor is positioned. Leaders excel in both execution and vision, while Challengers demonstrate strong execution capabilities with limited vision. Visionaries showcase innovative thinking but face challenges with execution, and Niche Players either have a strong focus on specific market segments or are still developing capabilities in both dimensions.

Analysis of the Best Enterprise Backup Solutions According to Gartner in 2025

Based on Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant analysis, presented in an image below, six vendors in total have achieved Leader status. Bacula Enterprise is not assessed in this analysis as it does not disclose its annual revenue:

• Veeam
• Commvault
• Rubrik
• Cohesity
• Dell Technologies
• Druva

Veeam maintains its leadership position with established its market presence in diverse geographic regions, combined with strong ransomware protection capabilities. Its security features include AI-based in-line scanning, Veeam Threat Hunter, and IOC detection, supported by its Cyber Secure program that provides a real-time incident response and ransomware recovery warranty. The platform’s clients can take advantage of versatile data restoration and mobility with cross-hypervisor restorations between major hypervisors, as well as direct restore functionality from on-premises workloads to Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform.

Commvault

Commvault demonstrates its industry leadership with comprehensive cloud workload coverage and strategic acquisition capabilities. It offers broad IaaS and PaaS support with native Oracle, Microsoft Azure DevOps, and government cloud coverage for AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The acquisition of Appranix has allowed Commvault to enhance its Cloud Rewind strategy, delivering improved cloud application infrastructure discovery, protection, and recovery with completely orchestrated protection for the application stack and improved recovery speeds.

Rubrik

Rubrik is an excellent option for cyberrecovery and detection purposes, with its Security Cloud platform driving comprehensive protection for both data and identity. Rubrik’s solution features AI-based in-line anomaly detection, advanced threat monitoring with hunting capabilities, and even orchestrated recovery across hybrid identity environments. The solution is distributed using a Universal SaaS Application License that supports unlimited storage capacity per user with portability features between supported SaaS applications.

Cohesity

Cohesity gained improved capabilities with its acquisition of Veritas’ NetBackup and Alta Data Protection portfolios, offering comprehensive workload coverage, no matter if they’re on-premises, SaaS, or multicloud. Its newly-combined portfolio provides broad geographic coverage with an expansive global infrastructure and support teams. Enhanced cyberincident response services are also included in the package using their Cyber Event Response Team, partnered with industry-leading providers (Palo Alto Networks, Mandiant).

Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies emphasizes its deep integration with Dell storage infrastructure, using PowerProtect Data Manager’s integration with PowerMax and PowerStore storage arrays, combined with DD Boost and Storage Direct Protection capabilities. Its built-in AI Factory integration for on-premises AI infrastructure includes security measures for Kubernetes metadata, training data models, vector databases, configurations, and parameters. There are also enhanced managed detection and response services that incorporate CrowdStrike Falcon XDR Platform licensing, as well.

Druva

Druva demonstrates powerful execution of its product strategy, using an enhanced SaaS-based platform architecture hosted using AWS. The underlying architecture allows Druva to accelerate delivery of critical offerings, including Azure Cloud storage tenant options, support for Microsoft Entra ID, and optimized protection for Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Network-Attached Storage (NAS). The AI-powered operational assistance of Druva through Dru Assist and Dru Investigate enhances user experience and security insights, delivering proactive ransomware defense using managed services.

Other Vendors in the Magic Quadrant

The remaining vendors occupy other quadrants, based on their strengths and current market focus:

• Huawei appears in the role of a Challenger, with strong flash-based scale-out appliance architecture and multiple layers of ransomware detection capabilities (but with a limited scope of multicloud protection)
• HYCU is categorized as a Visionary, offering comprehensive SaaS protection strategy with strong support for Google Cloud Platform
• IBM is also considered a Visionary, delivering AI integration through watsonx and integrated early threat detection capabilities
• Arcserve, OpenText, and Unitrends are all Niche Players, focusing on specific market segments: Arcserve targets midmarket environments, OpenText emphasizes internal product integrations, and Unitrends serves SMB markets via managed service providers

It should also be noted that the absence of a vendor on the Magic Quadrant does not directly translate into any lack of viability. For example, while Bacula Systems did not meet all inclusion criteria, it was still included in the Honorable Mentions section as a software-based offering with open-source and commercially licensed and supported products.

How to Verify the Credibility of Enterprise Backup Software Using Gartner.com?

Enterprise organizations regularly rely on Gartner’s research platform to make informed backup software decisions and validate vendor claims. Although access to complete research from Gartner does require an active subscription, organizations have the ability to use multiple strategies to verify vendor credibility and positioning. There are four primary approaches to verification covered here: direct Gartner research access, vendor reference validation, market trend verification, and supplementary validation sources.

Direct Gartner Research Access

Direct Gartner research access is the most comprehensive verification method, but  requires the purchase of a Gartner subscription. The Magic Quadrant research comes with detailed vendor analysis with specific strengths and limitations, as well as customer reference data and financial performance metrics, both of which help validate vendor claims about market position, technical capabilities, or customer satisfaction. When given access to the full report, it is highly recommended to review the complete vendor profiles to gain a better understanding of the specific limitations and competitive advantages of each vendor that are relevant to each organization’s specific requirements.

Vendor Reference Validation

The accuracy of vendor reference validation is improved significantly with Gartner’s peer insights and customer review platforms. Although vendors commonly cite their Gartner’s positioning, customers should verify these claims by accessing research publications, specific quadrant placements, and any limitations or cautions provided in the analysis. Gartner performs a highly thorough research that explains why vendors have achieved their positioning, helping potential clients evaluate whether a specific solution aligns with their organizational needs.

Market Trend Verification

Market trend verification using Gartner’s strategic planning assumptions helps companies understand whether vendor roadmaps align with the general industry’s  direction. With access to Gartner’s information, organizations would be able to evaluate vendor claims about AI integration, cloud capabilities, and security features against current industry trends to assess their strategic alignment.

Supplementary Validation Sources

Supplementary validation sources should be used alongside Gartner’s research for the most comprehensive vendor evaluation. Gartner’s findings are then cross-referenced against the reports of other analysts, as well as customer case studies, the results of independent testing, and proof-of-concept evaluations. Such an approach helps verify whether vendor capabilities match both specific organizational requirements and Gartner’s own assessment.

How to Choose an Enterprise Backup Solution?

Picking a single backup solution from a long list of competitors is extremely hard, given the many factors the potential customer must consider. To make the process easier, we have made a checklist that any customer would be able to rely on when attempting to choose a backup solution for their enterprise organization.

1. Figure Out Your Backup Strategy

Large-scale businesses and enterprises require a detailed backup strategy to make it easier to plan ahead and plan appropriate actions for specific situations, such as  user errors, system failures, cyberattacks, etc.

Some of the most common topics that should be addressed in a backup strategy are:

• High availability
• Backup scheduling
• Backup policies
• Backup targets
• Audit requirements
• RTOs and RPOs

High Availability

Companies have distinct preferences in backup storage locations. One company may want to store backups in cloud storage, while another favors on-premise storage within its infrastructure. Determining the storage locations for future backups is an essential first step. In the context of the 3-2-1 rule, there must be several locations, both on- and offsite.

Example high availability infrastructure for enterprise: 

2 backup servers: the primary one in the main data center, with the second one in another data center or in the cloud. A combination of storage systems following the 3-2-1 rule: on-premise NAS or SAN via RAID, cloud and tape for resiliency. Real-time block-level replication between both servers. Automated failover and load balancers for backup servers to minimize load. High-performance network switches and paths, fibre channel. All of the above with the monitoring system and automated alerts.

Backup Scheduling

Understanding when would be best to perform a system backup is key to ensuring that there are no interruptions or slow-downs in operations caused by a sudden backup process. Many backup solutions prefer to create full backups outside of business hours to avoid interruptions to the businesses themselves. However, it is possible that enterprises have so much data that creating full backups cannot be completed even if done overnight. In such situations, synthetic full backups are a better option.

Example backup schedule for enterprise: 

Create full backup during weekends (for example, Sunday at midnight) to minimize impact on application performance. Perform incrementals at the end of each workday (for example, 11:30 PM, Monday to Saturday). A single differential backup on Wednesday night. Of course, for systems with critical importance (high-transactional DBs, for example) execute more incremental backups, probably several times per day.

Backup Policies

Determining backup policies wisely considers both available storage space and network bandwidth. A full backup would be best performed periodically, (once a week or a month, depending on your situation), and an incremental backup on a regular basis (daily, for example) to ensure data consistency. Differential backups fall between full and incrementals, because they require more storage space than incrementals, but are faster to restore than fulls. Choosing the proper mix of backup policies depends on data size, data type, data change frequency, RTO & RPO, and network and storage resources.

Sample enterprise backup policy: 

Perform a full backup once a month during the weekend, when the network usage is at a minimum. Add 2-4 differential backups during the month to track changes since the last full. On top of that, add daily incrementals to track day-to-day differences. Use all incrementals once a month to create a synthetic full backup, in case a new full backup is not possible.

Backup Targets

The average company may have multiple storage types in its infrastructure. The main goal is determining the specific storage types for a backup solution, while also keeping the potential sizes of future backups in mind (since backups tend to grow in size as time goes on, and knowing when it is time to expand the existing storage or purchase more storage is important). Implementing tiered storage is also a good tactic, meaning essential datasets are stored in expensive storage with rapid recovery capabilities, while older or less critical datasets are backed up to slower cloud storage, like Amazon Deep Archive, or to tape media.

Audit Requirements

There are many industry-specific requirements and standards for data storage that the company must adhere to. Having a complete understanding of the regulations your company must adhere to is a great advantage in choosing a backup solution. For example, organizations will almost certainly have to comply with GDPR and CCPA, PCI DSS if you’re accepting online payments, HIPAA if you’re a medical organization, SOX if you’re publicly traded, CMMC if you’re working with US DoD, and others.

RTOs and RPOs

These parameters are some of the most important for any backup strategy. As their names suggest, RTO represents the maximum length of time the company is willing to endure before its operational status is restored. Conversely, RPO shows how much data the company is willing to lose without causing significant damage to its regular operations. Understanding the company’s needs in terms of RPO and RTO also makes it easier to figure out parameters such as recoverability, backup frequency, recovery feature set, and backup software SLAs.

Example RTO & RPO requirements for enterprise:

• Critical apps & high-transactional databases
  • 1-2 hours RTO, 10 minutes RPO
• Regular work apps (CRM, ERP, etc)
  •  4-6 hours RTO, RPO 1 hour
• Email, messenger and other communication apps
  • 2-4 hours RTO, 30 minutes RPO
• File shares
  • 24 hours RTO, 4 hours RPO
• Other non-critical and demo systems
  • RTO 24-72 hours, 12-24 hours RPO

The process of finalizing the backup strategy as a single document must be a collaboration among multiple departments if the strategy is to adhere to the company’s objectives and business goals. Creating a concrete backup strategy is an excellent first step toward understanding what your company needs from an enterprise backup solution.

Additional Strategic Considerations

Several more factors contribute to the development of a successful backup strategy, such as:

• Data Volume and Classification: Assess the total data volume to be protected, categorized by criticality. High-priority information such as customer records, intellectual property, or financial information will demand more frequent backups with faster recovery capabilities than the systems surrounding archival data.
• Budget Allocation: Establish clear budget limits for hardware infrastructure, software licensing, ongoing maintenance, and staff training. Both capital expenditures (perpetual licenses, hardware) and operational expenses (subscription fees, support contracts, cloud storage) must be considered.
• IT Infrastructure Assessment: Evaluate existing network bandwidth, server resources, and storage capacity. Determine all requirements for integration with current systems, including cloud services, databases, and virtualization platforms.
• Security and Compliance Requirements: Identify applicable industry standards and regulations: GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, etc. Establish security requirements with all regulatory prerequisites in mind, like audit trail capabilities, encryption standards, and access controls.

2. Research Backup Solutions for Enterprises

This entire step revolves around collecting information about backup solutions. A significant part of this step has already been done in this article, with our long and detailed list of business continuity software tools. Of course, it is possible to conduct a much more thorough analysis by calculating business-critical parameters and comparing different features based on the results of specific tests.

3. Calculate Total Cost of Ownership

Enterprise backup solutions are considered long-term investments, and performing a cost-benefit analysis and calculation of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) makes it much easier to evaluate the software. Here is what needs to be taken into account during calculations:

• Cost of the license (perpetual or subscription-based model)
• Cost of hardware
• Implementation fees (if you plan to use outsourced integration)
• Cost of ongoing support and updates
• Cost of power, cooling and other utilities to run the backup system
• Cost of additional bandwidth and networks
• Cost of storage (disks, tape, cloud), as well as storage management software costs
• Cost of training personnel
  

4. Perform “Proof-of-Concept” (PoC) tests

Once you have identified a relatively small list of potential backup solutions, it is time to move on to the testing phase to ensure that the solution meets all your designated objectives. This is also where a more detailed evaluation of features must happen. The idea is to ensure that more essential capabilities are included in the backup solution so that you don’t trade “easy data recovery” for “easy first-time setup,” for example.

A good PoC should work within your IT environment and not on a demo stand, to make sure the system behaves as expected when put into production. The testing itself involves both feature testing and stress testing the whole system under a significant load. You should also test the vendor’s support team, their responsiveness and effectiveness, as well as their documentation. To succeed, define your objectives and success metrics clearly, and set a realistic timeline for all tests to keep the PoC time-efficient.

5. Finalize your choice & update DR procedures

At this point, there should be little or no doubt about the right enterprise backup solution for your situation. Creating your disaster recovery and business continuity plans for your new backup solution and its capabilities is essential. This is the final step of the process: ensuring that you have a detailed rulebook that specifies what actions are taken to protect each and every part of your system and what must be done if your system suffers some sort of data breach.

Enterprise Backup Software Pricing Models and Cost Considerations

Enterprise backup software pricing differs substantially across vendors and different licensing models have a direct impact on TCO and budget predictability. Understanding how different pricing structures operate assists organizations select the solution that best aligns with their financial constraints and growth projections, all while avoiding unexpected cost increases as data volume grows.

What are the Different Enterprise Backup Pricing Models?

Backup vendors that work with enterprise clients use several distinct pricing approaches, each of which has its advantages and limitations for specific organizational profiles:

1. Capacity-based licensing charges businesses based on the total data volume protected. It includes raw data capacity, compressed data, or data after deduplication (depending on the vendor). Capacity-based offerings have straightforward cost correlations with data volumes but also result in unpredictable expenses when organizational data grows exponentially.
2. Agent-based licensing provides cost calculations based on the number of protected endpoints, servers, or backup clients, irrespective of the total data volume. Organizations must pay for each system that needs backup protection, be they physical servers, virtual machines, or database instances. This model usually remains constant and predictable, even with significant data growth.
3. Subscription-based licensing delivers backup software using recurring monthly or annual payments, often covering software updates, support services, and cloud storage allocation. Subscription models ensure access to the latest features and security updates for each client, while converting capital expenditures into operational expenditures.
4. Perpetual licensing demands upfront software purchase, while updates and support are delegated to a separate contract with its own terms. Organizations with perpetual licenses own the software permanently but still must pay additional costs for ongoing support and version upgrades.
5. Feature-tiered pricing is a range of several product editions with different capability levels, allowing organizations to pick and choose the functionalities that match their budget constraints and requirements. Advanced features like encryption, deduplication, or DR orchestration are rarely included in base pricing tiers.

Hybrid pricing models are also common, combining multiple approaches in the same platform, such as a base licensing fee with additional charges for advanced features. These models offer impressive flexibility but must be evaluated carefully to  understand their total cost.

Data Volume Impact on Backup Costs

Data volume growth has a significant impact on the total cost of backup software, especially in capacity-based licensing models where expenses increase directly with data volumes.

Organizations that experience periods of rapid data growth face challenges associated with cost escalations in capacity-based pricing. A company protecting 10 TB of information initially may find its total protection cost doubling or tripling as total data volume reaches 20-30 TB over the span of several years. Such a linear relationship between cost and data volume is known for creating budget planning difficulties, resulting in unexpected infrastructure expenses.

Agent-based licensing models offer cost stability during data growth periods, as their licensing fees are not dependent on total data volume. Organizations with predictable endpoint counts but variable data growth may find agent-based licensing more effective than the rest, achieving budget predictability and accommodating expansion at the same time.

Deduplication and compression technologies are regularly used to reduce effective data volumes for capacity-based pricing, which potentially lowers total licensing costs. However, it is up to each organization to evaluate  whether deduplication ratios will remain consistent with different data types and sources over time.

Planning for data expansion requires knowledge of organizational growth patterns, as well as backup frequency policies and regulatory retention requirements. Organizations should model pricing scenarios across 3-5 year periods to evaluate the total cost implications of different licensing methods.

Total Cost of Ownership Planning for Enterprise Backups

Total cost of ownership in enterprise backups extends far beyond software licensing to include hardware infrastructure, implementation services, ongoing maintenance, and operational expenses:

• Hardware and infrastructure costs – backup servers, storage arrays, network equipment, facility requirements. Costs vary significantly between on-premise deployments and cloud-based platforms.
• Implementation and professional services – initial setup, configuration, data migration, staff training. The complexity of a backup solution has a direct influence on this factor.
• Ongoing support and maintenance – software updates, technical support, system monitoring. 24/7 support with guaranteed response times is a common requirement for enterprise organizations, translating into more expensive premium support contracts.
• Operational expenses – power, cooling, facility space, dedicated staff for backup system management. Full-time equivalent staff costs for backup administration, monitoring, and disaster recovery planning are practically mandatory for enterprise organizations.
• Training and certification costs – current expertise with backup technologies and best practices. Regular training investments prevent operational issues while maximizing backup system effectiveness.

Different licensing approaches affect TCO values in different ways. Bacula Enterprise would be an outlier on the list of traditional licensing options, because it uses a subscription-based model that does not rely on volume-based costs, greatly improving the financial burden on enterprise clients with large data volumes. It offers cost predictability for these organizations, with expenses remaining stable regardless of current data growth patterns.

Organizations must evaluate pricing models against their specific growth patterns, budget constraints, and data characteristics to find the most economically suitable option for these enterprise requirements.

Enterprise On-Premise vs Cloud Backup Solutions

The choice between on-premise and cloud backup architectures for enterprises is one of the most critical decisions to address when an enterprise organization is creating a data protection strategy. This single decision directly influences technical capabilities, operational costs, security posture, and even the long-term scalability of the environment. Modern enterprise backup strategies actively incorporate hybrid approaches: a combination of deployment models that optimize for specific workloads and maintain comprehensive data protection at the same time.

On-Premises vs Cloud Backup Solutions for Large Businesses

On-premises backup solutions deploy backup software and storage infrastructure in the company’s own data centers. These solutions offer direct control over all aspects of a backup environment, including network infrastructure, backup servers, dedicated storage arrays, and tape libraries. With this, enterprises maintain complete ownership of their data, but while also bearing full responsibility for maintenance, upgrading, and disaster recovery planning of their infrastructure.

Cloud backup solutions use remote infrastructure managed by third-party providers, with backup services delivered using internet connectivity to secure, geographically distributed, data centers. These services range from simple cloud storage targets to highly sophisticated Backup-as-a-Service platforms capable of handling the entire process remotely. Cloud providers are responsible for maintaining the underlying infrastructure, as well as accommodating enterprise-grade SLAs, multi-tenant security frameworks, and regulatory compliance. They also often provide additional services, such as disaster recovery orchestration.

Hybrid backup solutions are an increasingly popular option in this market, combining on-premises and cloud components to get the best  performance, cost, and protection levels from both solution types. Typical implementations of a hybrid backup solution include:

• Local backup appliances for quick recovery of frequently accessed data
• Automated replication capabilities to cloud storage as the means of long-term retention
• Rapid local recovery capabilities with cloud economics for offsite protection

Benefits and Limitations of On-Premise and Cloud Backup Solutions for Enterprises

Each backup deployment type has its distinct advantages and shortcomings that organizations must be aware of, evaluating them against their organizational requirements, budget constraints, and operational capabilities. We have collected the most noteworthy aspects of each platform in a table for the sake of convenience:

What Should Be Considered When Choosing Between On-Premises and Cloud Backup Solutions within an Enterprise Market?

Selecting the most optimal backup deployment strategy requires careful evaluation of many interconnected factors that will vary significantly across organizations. The key considerations covered next are just a framework for making informed decisions and must be expanded with case-specific topics in each individual case.

Data and Performance Requirements

Data volume and growth patterns must be evaluated in any case, because cloud storage costs scale linearly with data volumes, while on-premises costs remain relatively flat after the initial investment. Current backup requirements and projected growth over the solution’s lifecycle directly impact the economic viability of both options. Recovery Time Objective also has a measurable effect on deployment choice, with on-premise solutions offering faster recovery for large datasets, while cloud solutions are limited by internet bandwidth, especially when it comes to the data volumes that enterprises deal with regularly.

Regulatory and Compliance Needs

Compliance requirements dictate deployment options on a regular basis, particularly in organizations that are subject to specific security frameworks or data residency restrictions. Enterprises must evaluate whether cloud providers are able to meet specific compliance requirements using appropriate specifications, data residency options, and comprehensive audit capabilities to satisfy regulatory scrutiny.

Technical Infrastructure Assessment

Critical considerations that are paramount for managing backup systems include existing network bandwidth, internet reliability, and the availability of internal IT expertise. Businesses with limited bandwidth or unreliable internet connectivity rarely find cloud backup solutions to be their preferred option for large-scale deployments. The availability of internal IT expertise, on the other hand, has a substantial impact on the viability of on-premise solutions, due to the necessity to conduct backup system management, troubleshooting, and disaster recovery planning on-site.

Financial Analysis Framework

Total cost of ownership must cover the solution’s expected lifecycle, including initial capital expenditures versus operational expenditures for budgeting purposes. Ongoing costs vary substantially between approaches: cloud solutions have predictable monthly costs, while on-premises deployments need power, cooling, and facility management expenses. It is important to model costs across multiple scenarios, not just normal operations but disaster recovery situations as well. Data growth projections must also be taken into account to find the most effective option.

Backup Solutions for Business Security

Enterprise backup solutions are the last line of defense against data breaches, cyber threats, and operational failures capable of crippling entire business operations. Modern-day backup solutions are expected to go far beyond simple data recovery, creating a comprehensive security framework capable of protecting against complex attacks while ensuring rapid restoration.

How Important is Data Security to Enterprise Backup Solutions?

The importance of data security in enterprise-level backup software has reached an all-time high, with cyber attacks becoming more complex and frequent than ever. With ransomware attacks affecting 72% of businesses worldwide (as of 2023) and threat actors specifically targeting backup infrastructure, organizations no longer have the option to treat backup security as an afterthought.

Modern backup solutions need proactive protection against cyber threats, while maintaining the integrity and availability of backup data. These measures are practically mandatory for a company that wants to ensure the viability of its recovery efforts, even when primary environments are compromised.

Security Features to Look For in Backup Software

Enterprise backup software must incorporate several layers of security features to  protect against diverse threat vectors, ensuring the recoverability of critical data. Essential security features include:

• Backup immutability and WORM storage to prevent data tampering
• Comprehensive encryption for both at-rest and mid-transit data (AES-256, Blowfish)
• Air-gapped storage options to isolate backups from production networks either logically or physically
• Multi-factor authentication and role-based access control for administrative feature set
• Automated anomaly detection with AI-powered threat scanning capabilities
• Audit logging and monitoring with integration capabilities to SIEM systems for improved security oversight
• Zero-trust architecture principles across solution design and deployment practices

Advanced security capabilities must also cover real-time malware scanning, automated threat response workflows, and integration with enterprise-level security platforms to offer comprehensive data protection during the entire backup lifecycle.

Tips for Improving Security Positioning in Enterprise Backup Solutions

Organizations would significantly improve their backup security posture by using strategic implementation and operational best practices. Regular security testing must cover penetration testing for backup infrastructure, verification of air-gap effectiveness, and recovery procedure validation under simulated attack conditions. Using the aforementioned 3-2-2 backup role with at least one immutable copy helps ensure information availability even during the most dire security incidents.

Operational security enhancements involve:

• Establishing separate administrative credentials for backup systems
• Implementing time-delayed deletion policies to avoid immediate data destruction
• Maintaining offline recovery media for the most critical systems

Additionally, it is important for backup administrators to receive specialized security training with a focus on recognizing social engineering attempts and following incident response procedures. Regular verification of backup integrity and automated compliance reporting are both instrumental for maintaining security standards while creating audit trails for potential regulatory requirements.

2025 objectives and challenges of enterprise backup solutions

In 2025, the importance of data security is at an all-time high, with geopolitical conflicts backed by cyberattacks on a regular basis. Ongoing hacking campaigns, for example, gain more momentum as time goes on, and the number of cyber incidents continues to grow in strength and complexity.

In this context, no security feature is considered excessive, and some of the most sophisticated options have become far more common and widely used than ever. For example, air gapping as a concept works well against most forms of ransomware, due to the ability to physically disconnect one or several backups from the outside world.

A very similar logic applies to backup immutability, the ability to create data that cannot be modified in any way once it has been written the first time. WORM storage works well to provide backup immutability, and many enterprise backup solutions also offer such capabilities in one way or another.

Data security and resilience remain top priorities for enterprises in 2025, driven by evolving threats, fast technological advancements, and the rapid surge in the number of regulatory demands. Although many challenges from previous years persist, there is also a selection of newer trends that have emerged to reshape the objectives for backup strategies in large businesses and enterprises. Here are some of the most recent issues that enterprise-grade backup software must address:

Ransomware Resilience

Improved ransomware resilience, due to the fact that ransomware attacks keep growing in scale and complexity. Features such as air-gapped storage, backup immutability, and advanced recovery orchestration have become the norm for many organizations, despite being nothing more than helpful suggestions just a few years ago. There is also a growing emphasis on AI-assisted anomaly detection to identify threats in real-time for better responses to each issue.

AI and ML Integration

Expanded integration of AI and ML have already transformed backup operations to a certain degree. Now, these technologies optimize backup schedules, predict system failures, and improve data deduplication capabilities of the environment. Additionally, AI-driven insights also help companies to streamline resource allocation, reduce operational overhead, and prioritize critical data when necessary.

Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

Ongoing adaptation to both hybrid and multi-cloud environments requires backup software that is much more complex and versatile at the same time. There is greater demand for cloud-agnostic solutions with centralized management, data encryption, and information portability as primary features.

Continuous Data Protection

Increased emphasis on Continuous Data Protection instead of traditional backup windows has been forced by the need to maintain near-real-time data protection while also reducing RTOs and ensuring business continuity. Both of these requirements have made traditional backup windows much less relevant than ever before.

Regulatory Compliance Requirements

Continuous evolution of regulatory compliance requirements has resulted in many new data protection laws and updates to existing frameworks. 2025 is guaranteed to both continue the demand to support all kinds of existing regulations and to facilitate the introduction of newer regulations that revolve around AI-related governance. Notable examples include:

• EU AI Act Implementation that bans AI systems posing unacceptable risks, introduced with a phased implementation starting from 1 August 2024 and which will go into full effect 2 August 2026
• Trump Administration AI Executive Order, cited as “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence”, focused on revoking directives perceived as restrictive to AI innovation with the intent of improving the “unbiased and agenda-free” development of AI systems
• Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act that adopts a risk-based approach similar to EU AI Act for employment decisions

Containerized and Microservice Architectures

Improved support for containerized and microservice architectures is already extremely common, and it is expected to become the de-facto baseline in 2025, with support for Kubernetes, Docker, and microservices becoming more and more common. Enterprises now need backup solutions that manage both multi-cluster environments, and hybrid deployments, while providing advanced recovery options with containerized workflows in mind.

Sustainability and Green Initiatives

Sustainability and green initiatives are expected to continue their relevance, as environmental sustainability is now a strategic objective for almost all companies. The prioritization of energy-efficient data centers and optimized storage usage with eco-friendly hardware in existing backup infrastructures continues to offer support for broader ESG goals as time goes on. Regarding the sustainability of the product development itself, open source-based solutions such as Bacula tend to score far higher than proprietary solutions due to the efficiency of software testing and development by their communities.

Cost and Value Optimization

Cost and value optimizations now go hand in hand, with cost controls retaining their importance and value optimization coming into focus, both now and during all of 2025. All businesses must now try to balance security, scalability, resilience, and cost-efficiency in the same environment with flexible licensing, advanced deduplication, and intelligent tiered storage as potential solutions.

A good example of such a solution is Bacula Enterprise, with its unique subscription-based licensing model breaking from industry norms by charging based on the total number of backup agents instead of data volume. It offers its customers cost predictability and budget control, allowing them to scale their data storage without the massive escalations in licensing costs that are commonly associated with the capacity-based pricing models of most backup vendors on the market.

Data Sovereignty Concerns

The increase in concerns around data sovereignty has put greater emphasis on navigating cross-border data transfer regulations in 2025. Backup solutions now must support localized storage options with robust data residency controls and complete compliance with relevant international standards.

There are multiple examples of government-specific cloud solutions that are located in a specific country and meet the privacy, sovereignty, governance, and transparency requirements of that country:

• Bleu – French Hyperscale Cloud, created in partnership with Microsoft Azure
• A Sovereign Cloud Platform for the Public Sector in Germany, a result of a partnership between Delos Cloud, Microsoft, and Arvato Systems

Conclusion

The enterprise backup solution market is vast and highly competitive, which is both a positive and a negative factor for all customers.

The positive factor is that competition is at an all-time high and companies strive to implement new features and improve existing ones to stay ahead of their competitors, offering their customers an experience that is constantly evolving and improving.

The negative factor, on the other hand, is that the wealth of options may make it difficult for any company to choose one single solution. There are so many different factors that go into choosing an enterprise backup solution that the process itself becomes extremely difficult.

This article has presented a long list of different enterprise backup solutions, their unique features, their positive and negative sides, their user reviews, etc. Any enterprise-grade backup solution is a sophisticated combination of features and frameworks with the goal of providing a multitude of advantages to end users in the form of large-scale enterprises.

Recommended Enterprise Backup Solutions

Any enterprise-level backup solution consists of many different elements, including flexibility, mobility, security, feature variety, and many others. Choosing the appropriate backup solution for a specific company is a long and arduous process that is made slightly less complicated by using the sequence of different steps presented in this article. As for specific solution recommendations, our list included a variety of interesting enterprise backup software examples for all kinds of clientele.

Commvault is a viable option for a large enterprise that is not shy about spending extra to receive one of the best feature sets on the market. Acronis Cyber Backup is a great choice for larger companies that must deal with much sensitive data, as it offers one of the most sophisticated data security feature sets on the market. Veeam is another highly regarded player in the enterprise backup and disaster recovery market, known for its robust solutions that cater to a wide range of environments, including premium capabilities in virtual environments.

Alternatively, there are also backup solutions such as Bacula Enterprise that offer especially high security, flexibility and scalability. Bacula Enterprise delivers coverage to companies with many different storage types in place, from physical drives to virtual machines, databases, containers and clusters, with up to 10,000 endpoints covered at the same time.

Bacula works with both enterprise-grade commercial infrastructures and government entities. The Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate uses Bacula Enterprise for its live media broadcast environment, reporting exceptional results with a reasonable price tag and impressive customer support.

One of the most unconventional examples of Bacula Enterprise’s versatility is NASA’s choice of Bacula’s solution. The next quote belongs to Gustaf J. Barkstrom, Systems Administrator at SSAI, NASA Langley contractor.

«Of those evaluated, Bacula Enterprise was the only product that worked with HPSS out -of-the-box without vendor development, provided multi-user access, had encryption compliant with Federal Information Processing Standards, did not have a capacity-based licensing model, and was available within budget»

All in all, choosing the specific solution for any company is no easy task, and we hope that this article will be helpful in providing as much information as possible about a number of different offerings.

Key Takeaways

• Enterprise backup solutions require comprehensive evaluations of data protection capabilities, disaster recovery support, storage compatibility, and retention options to meet complex organizational requirements
• Security features are paramount, with ransomware affecting more than 72% of businesses worldwide, which makes backup immutability, encryption, and air-gapped storage essential for proper security
• Deployment model selection between on-premise, cloud, and hybrid solutions should be decided based on data volume, performance requirements, and regulatory compliance needs
• The 3-2-2- backup rule offers enhanced protection by maintaining three data copies on two different media types at two separate geographic locations
• Systematic vendor evaluation using Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, proof-of-concept testing, and TCO analysis ensures organizations select solutions that are aligned with their individual requirements

Why you can trust us

Bacula Systems is all about accuracy and consistency and our materials always try to provide the most objective points of view of different technologies, products, and companies. Our reviews use many different methods, such as product info and expert insights, to generate the most informative content possible.

Our materials report all types of factors about every single solution presented, be it feature sets, pricing, customer reviews, etc. Bacula’s product strategy is overlooked and controlled by Jorge Gea, the CTO of Bacula Systems, and Rob Morrison, the CMO of Bacula Systems.

Before joining Bacula Systems, Jorge was for many years the CTO of Whitebearsolutions SL, where he led the Backup and Storage area and the WBSAirback solution. Jorge now provides leadership and guidance in current technological trends, technical skills, processes, methodologies and tools for the rapid and exciting development of Bacula products. Responsible for the product roadmap, Jorge is actively involved in the architecture, engineering and development process of Bacula components. Jorge holds a Bachelor degree in computer science engineering from the University of Alicante, a Doctorate in computation technologies and a Master Degree in network administration.

Rob started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years, Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat, and Pentaho, ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours degree in Digital Media and Communications.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the biggest differences between enterprise-grade and consumer-grade backup tools?

Enterprise backup solutions are designed primarily with large-scale environments in mind, providing advanced features like encryption, deduplication, support for hybrid infrastructures, and more. Consumer-grade tools, on the other hand, use primarily basic file backup and recovery methods without most of the substantial features in automation, security, and scalability that most enterprise tools have.

How can immutability assist with protecting against ransomware attacks?

Backup immutability exists to make sure that, once information has been written, it cannot be altered for a specific retention period. This approach is often referred to as WORM – Write Once Read Many – and it offers substantial security against most ransomware attacks, preventing them from encrypting or otherwise modifying existing immutable data.

What explains air-gapped storage’s apparent importance in enterprise data security?

Air-gapped storage uses physical or logical isolation of backup data from the rest of the environment to prevent any direct access to it from external sources, including cyber-attacks and ransomware. This physical isolation ensures the safety of backup data, even when the primary systems of the environment have been compromised.